Blame engineering
On institutions for siphoning responsibility
April 26, 2020 — January 21, 2025
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Notes on the engineering of blame as a thing in itself. Who do we decide is culpable for what? What is a structural problem, and what is a personal problem?
Is it worth blaming people for things instead of institutions, because powerful institutions are built to stick it to enemies?
Declaring people responsible for things seems very important in maintaining institutions that can execute on our moral wetware.
Is an indeterminacy of blame an inevitable feature of bureaucracies?
1 Incoming
Ryan Young has drawn my attention to Davies (2024) which looks at responsibility diffusion as a substitute for accountability.
Hot Money: porn, power and profit is an intriguing essay on how internet pornography sets up a regulatory framework that navigates national borders and moral systems without anyone being held directly responsible.
The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics:
The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it. In particular, if you interact with a problem and benefit from it, you are a complete monster.
Connecting to messenger shooting.
Why You’ve Never Been In A Plane Crash. Answer: the blameless postmortem. The case for actual blame diffusion.
Power Buys You Distance From The Crime:
When we assess moral blame for a situation, we typically want it to be roughly in proportion to how much power a person has to change said situation. But, just like money can be used to evade taxes, power can be used to avoid blame. This results in a distorted blame-distribution apparatus which assigns the least blame to the person most able to change the situation. Allow me to provide a few examples to illustrate this.